Don’t Call it a Comeback: Lilly, Part One

I mean this literally.  We’re not going to call it a comeback just yet, because we don’t even know what going to happen.  But, here I am today sharing Lilly’s story with you all and taking you along for the ride!  Why am I making such a big deal about the fact that my mom’s unbroke five-year-old filly is down here in Florida and is finally ready to get started under saddle, you might ask?  In order to understand, we’re going to have to dive into a bit of the back story.  And boy, it is a doozy.  Oh, Lilly.  Where do I even begin?

Lilly Pulitzer, the horse, was born on March 16th 2016.  I know this because she was born four days before both my brother’s and my dad’s birthday.  Born during an “L” year for the KWPN registry, and in keeping with the tradition on her mother’s side of naming horses after designers, Lilly Pulitzer was the natural choice.  (Side note: Lilly Pulitzer, the designer label – if you’re interested in sponsoring a horse named after your founder – hit me up!).  Lilly was born via embryo transfer and is out of my first really good Amateur Owner jumper, Donna Karan, (who also went on to be super competitive with my mom in the adult jumper ring).  Her sire is Rodrigoo VDL (Indoctro) who unfortunately got hurt as a young horse but showed huge scope and talent and has thrown some nice babies both here and in Europe.  Not only are both of her parents talented, but they both have really good brains.  Rodrigo was the type of stallion that you could stable and crosstie next to mares without a problem, and Donna was the type of horse who could show in the High A/O Jumpers one day, and then do the lead line class with a small child the next.  So, even though we knew that breeding can essentially be a crapshoot, and that so many things can go wrong before the horse even sets foot in the show ring, we were excited about the possibilities.

The first six or so months of Lilly’s life were rather uneventful.  Her surrogate was a maiden mare, meaning this was her first baby, so out of an abundance of caution, we had her foal out up at Wisconsin Equine.  Lilly was a healthy foal, and the surrogate mare who carried her was a great mom.  Little did we know that these six months would be the only “easy” part of her life up until this point.  Think I’m being dramatic?  The following is the list of events that have occurred in Lilly’s relatively short life since then:

1)    Shortly after weaning, we noticed that she was beginning to look a little “clubby” in both of her front feet.  We tried for a while to use corrective trimming to mitigate the problem, but soon we determined that her case was significant enough to require surgery.  Her surgery went well and her recovery time was quick.  We followed up with corrective shoeing and trimming.  A couple of months later, we took a new set of radiographs to make sure everything looked as good internally as we thought it did externally, as to the naked eye there was little to no evidence that she had ever been moderately “clubby” in both of her front legs.  As Lilly’s luck would have it, her vet said she had healed even better than he had thought she would, and that she was well within the range of normal.  After a better-than-expected outcome, Lilly went back to her life of hanging outside all day with her friends.  

2)    A significant coffin bone fracture at age two, that, after failing to initially be properly stabilized, ended up taking almost two years to heal.  During this time Lilly was exclusively on stall rest, with the exception of monthly trips up to Wisconsin Equine for rechecks and corrective shoeing the last eight months of her healing process.  Due to the fact that the fracture wasn’t as stable as we would have hoped initially, and that its really hard to keep a young horse quiet on stall rest for that long of a period of time, we were told by multiple vets that it was likely that scar tissue had formed within the fracture line, and that the fracture line would likely never fill in.  In January 2021, we took radiographs to see how the foot was looking, and as Lilly’s luck would have it, the field vet who took the images thought she had the wrong leg at first because she couldn’t find any evidence of a fracture.  That’s because, against all odds, the fracture line is now completely filled in and there is no radiographic evidence of her ever having broken her coffin bone.

3)    While en route to one of her monthly recheck appointments up at Wisconsin Equine in early 2020, the two horse trailer Lilly was in hit a patch of black ice (the roads were fine when the driver left in the morning in Illinois, but as he got closer to the clinic, the roads got worse).  The driver was able to control the vehicle and eventually came to a stop on the side of the road.  However, during the process, the escape door on the driver’s side of trailer became dislodged and Lilly somehow managed to break free of her quick release cross-tie and walk right out the people door.  Mind you, Lilly had at this point been on stall rest for 16 months.  Upon escaping through the people door, Lilly found herself walking around on a frozen, moderately busy Wisconsin road.  The key word here being walking.  The horse who hadn’t been outside in over a year, and hadn’t been anywhere in her life took a leisurely stroll down the road and back before walking up to her groom.  As Lilly’s luck would have it, both horse and driver came away from the accident unscathed, save for a small cut on Lilly’s forehead (presumably from walking through a door designed for people and not horses).  We rescheduled her appointment at the clinic for the next week and they confirmed – Both Lilly and her healing coffin bone were unaffected by the accident.

4)    In the middle of 2020, Lilly was a few months in to finally being able to be turned out again.  After returning to “real life” like a champ, she came in from turnout one day with a couple inch long laceration on her hind fetlock.  And there was blood – like a lot of blood – because she had nicked the corner of an artery.  Our vet came out, examined it and warned us that because of its location, there was the potential that she had either damaged some of the significant soft tissue structures in the area, or perhaps compromised the integrity of the joint capsule.  She advised that we might consider bringing her into a clinic in case she needed to be put under and have the joint capsule flushed (due to infection or perhaps a foreign body like a splinter being stuck in there somehow).  However, we decided to stitch her up at home, and both put her on IV antibiotics and perform regional limb profusions every other day for the next ten days.  And again, as Lilly’s luck would have it, the wound healed beautifully, never caused any issues within the joint capsule or the other soft tissue structures, and a few weeks later, Lilly returned to normal life.  Shoutout here to Dr. Paige Billek, because there’s no doubt that we owe Lilly’s relatively easy recovery from a serious wound to both her flawless sutures and amazing aftercare.

5)    After spending a few months back in Illinois this winter, Lilly got the invite to join the Glenwood Farm team down in Florida to officially start her under saddle career.  When she got the all clear to start going outside again in 2020, our vet suggested that we wait to get on her until 2021 to give her the opportunity to regain some of the muscle and body awareness that she had lost being stuck in a stall for so long.  So in the fall of 2020, we started to work Lilly on the lunge line with the saddle on, teaching her basic verbal commands like “woah” and the cluck.  But that’s about as far as we got before we left for Florida.  Anyway… Lilly arrived down in Florida on February 1st, and for a horse who had only been to a handful of placed in her life, Lilly walked off the trailer like a pro the morning that she arrived.  It was such a beautiful day, and since she was settling in so well, we decided to let her have a short turnout in the afternoon.  She calmly walked around her turnout for a few minutes before deciding to roll.  Before we could stop her, she had laid down, rolled all the way over, and got herself cast in the paddock fence.  To her credit, as soon as she realized she was stuck, she stayed frozen like a statue as we ran up to her and worked to free her front and hind leg from the fence.  

Once we got her free and got her inside, we noticed a small cut on her front leg at the back of her knee.  You know the drill – we had the vet out, she determined that it didn’t look serious but needed a couple (READ: TWO) sutures, and we put her on oral anti-inflammatories and antibiotics.  Everything looked great for a few days until the leg blew up.  We had the vet back out, and she threw the ultrasound probe on the leg just to make sure there wasn’t anything more serious going on.  On ultrasound, it looked just like she thought – that it was a subcutaneous wound that didn’t affect any other structures.  However, her serum amyloid a (a marker of inflammation that when elevated often indicates the body is fighting an active infection) was elevated so we made the decision to switch her to a different, stronger antibiotic.  Again, everything looked good for a few days, and then the leg blew up again.  At this point, we decided to get a surgeon involved because there was concern that the wound had somehow had compromised the carpal canal and therefore the joint itself might be infected.  We took Lilly into the clinic, and using contrast to allow them to better visualize the area on imaging, they determined that the carpal canal wasn’t affected, but that this small wound went all the way down to the bone and also had created a channel that went all the way down the back of the leg.  Again – this is after our vet had looked at the leg on ultrasound a few days after she got injured, and saw no indication of this, so thankfully we took her into the clinic where they were able to use contrast to see what we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to diagnose.  As Lilly’s luck would have it, again, there was no involvement of the carpal canal and all soft tissue structures remained intact.  She had just developed a significant case of cellulitis which required a more specific antibiotic, a Fura-Zone/DMSO sweat (don’t @ me, I know Fura-Zone is toxic and we use it very infrequently), and a few day stint in the clinic for monitoring.  A few days (and a couple thousand dollars) later, Lilly arrived back home, well on her way to recovery and no worse for the wear.

So yeah, I think that’s pretty much it.  Is your mind blown after reading all this?!  I with 100% seriousness say she’s the luckiest unlucky horse I’ve ever known.  She’s had an abundance of relatively major injuries and accidents, all of which have had just about the best-case scenario outcome up until this point.  Which is why we’re now going to call her #LuckyLilly, and why I’ve decided to bring you guys in to her story.  So here we are, giving that small cut on the back of her leg a few more days to heal before we begin to start her under saddle career.  She’s stubborn like her momma, but also is a smarty pants, so I think as long as she uses her powers for good and not for evil, we should be good.  But, I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen, if she’ll hold up, and if she does, if she’ll even be any good.  And that’s part of the fun (and also slightly terrifying) part of it.  So, all that to say, stay tuned for #LuckyLilly Part 2, coming soon to a computer or smartphone near you.